


reaching for your heart

by embraidery



Series: in the dawning light [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff, GNC Viktor Krum, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Nail Polish, Trans Hermione Granger, just two kids talking about fame and the future.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:54:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23228953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embraidery/pseuds/embraidery
Summary: "And I think...people vant to speak to me because I am young? I know I am good, but sometimes I think it is about my years.”Hermione nods, reaching out to squeeze Viktor’s hand. “I don’t think that means you aren’t very, very good at quidditch. I’ve seen you play.” She bumps his shoulder with hers. “I may be good at hiding it, but I do know you’re an international quidditch star.”They laugh.“I know this.” Viktor shrugs, rubs his silver-nailed thumb over the back of Hermione’s hand. “Is that terrible to say? That I know I’m good at quidditch?” He cracks a tenuous smile.“Not at all.”
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Viktor Krum
Series: in the dawning light [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1601728
Comments: 12
Kudos: 85





	reaching for your heart

**Author's Note:**

> At this point I'm just very, very soft, okay?
> 
> title from Stardust by Ásgeir.

Hermione figures out that she can cast a levitation spellon Viktor to float him up the stairs to the girls’ dorm without triggering the alarm. She’s so smart, Viktor thinks, every part of him warm and glowing with admiration for her, stomach swooping as he bobs along several feet above the ground. Hermione grabs his hands and tugs him down to the ground.

The dorm isn’t an old wooden ship creaking and rocking on the lake. It isn’t full of students murmuring, talking, shouting in a dozen languages. It’s warm and snug and drizzled with golden light streaming in through the tall windows, turning red where it filters through the curtains of Hermione’s four poster. Viktor never wants to leave.

She sits cross-legged against her headboard, pillow behind her back, painting her nails silver. Viktor’s never seen or smelled nail varnish before. He has to cast a spell to block his sense of smell for a few minutes, that’s how nasty it is, but it looks beautiful against her skin. The sunlight pours in from behind her hair, picking out each individual curl in gold, turning her hair into a halo--not that it isn’t a halo all the time, constantly. Does everyone else know how lovely she is? He would compare her to an angel, but he loves her ferocity, her passion, her temper: all the things that make her marvelously human. 

Hermione holds one of her hands up to look at it, turning it from side to side. “I’m still not convinced I like nail varnish,” she tells Viktor. 

“It looks beautiful, _temenuzhka.”_ Viktor reaches out to take Hermione’s hand. He traces his fingers around and around her nails, over her knuckles, alongside her tendons. He turns her hand over to trace the rivers of her veins and presses a kiss to her palms. When he looks up, Hermione’s watching him with fiercely burning cheeks, and they take a brief break to make out a bit on her bed, contorting themselves around the stacks of textbooks and parchments. Hermione pulls away to remind Viktor that her nail varnish is still wet. He takes the opportunity to pin her hands to her headboard, their fingers intertwining.

When they return to studying, hair mussed and cheeks aflame, Viktor picks up the bottle of nail varnish and rolls the top between his fingers. It looks like a potion swirling slowly in its tiny bottle. 

“You really haven’t heard of nail varnish? Your _mamo_ never wore it?” Hermione asks, looking at Viktor over her essay in progress.

“No. My _mamo,_ she vas a baker, and she vas not allowed to vear anything on her nails, or rings on her fingers.” 

“She was a baker? Oh, Viktor, that’s so nice.” Hermione sets down her quill and props her chin in her hands. 

“Yes. She vould bring home _mekitsa_ and _kozunak_ and _milinka_ and _baklava.”_ Viktor sighed, closing his eyes and propping his chin in his hand. “Oh, that _baklava!_ They do not make it right here. I haff tried it.”

Hermione sighs in delight. “Oh, I’ll have to go some day and try some real baklava.” 

“I vould like that,” Viktor says, still a little misty-eyed. “Vat about your mum?”

“She never wears it either. She’s a dentist. She wears gloves, but she still has to wash her hands a lot. It’s not worth it.”

Viktor turns the bottle upside down and watches a river of tiny glitter particles wind its way to the bottom of the bottle. “It is a shame, this looks very nice. Vould you do this to my nails?”

Hermione’s hand pauses just before it can grab her abandoned quill. “Alright.” 

She sets her books aside and moves closer to Viktor, taking his broad rectangular hands in hers. She unscrews the little cap and begins to work. The cool, wet sensation on his nails is new to Viktor, but not unwelcome, and he watches carefully as Hermione sweeps the tiny brush from base to tip of each nail. Her own fingers are short and elegant, with calluses on her knuckles from holding quills. She doesn’t have any ink stains on them, unlike Viktor, who seems always to have dark smudges splashed across his fingers. 

"You know, this is kind of a girl thing for Muggles," Hermione says carefully.

"Ah, yes?" Krum wiggles the fingers that have already been painted. "Vell, girls are vonderful." He looks up at Hermione with a smile.

Hermione laughs. "We are. Well, at least no one will say anything to you because you're famous, and the wizards won't know." She screws the cap back on the little bottle. 

“Ah!” Viktor says, flexing his hands. "I love it." 

"Here, I'll dry them for you." Hermione waves her wand over his nails.

"Thank you, _temenuzhka._ You are truly talented." Viktor reaches out to tuck her hand into his.

Hermione waves her other hand airily. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she says, but she’s smiling, the corners of her eyes crinkling. 

Viktor leans in to give her a quick kiss. She tastes like mint gum and _temenuzhka_ candy, which is objectively an odd combination, but wonderfully, distinctively Hermione. She runs one hand through Viktor’s hair, nails gently scraping along his scalp, before gently pulling away.

“What’s it like to be famous?” Hermione asks, picking her essay back up.

Viktor tilts his hands from side to side, watching the sun play on his shiny nails. “I do not think I am very good at it. My teammates, they do autographs and smile for pictures and sound good in magazines, and I…” He shrugs, feeling the enormous weight of expectation on his shoulders. “I vas a strange child, and then everyone knew who I vas and vanted to know me. I don’t know how to talk to them all.”

“You know how to talk to me,” Hermione says.

“You make it easy.” Viktor smiles. “Ve had lots of time together just being quiet before ve spoke. And it vas like, for you, I vas not famous. Other people...I don’t know. And I think...people vant to speak to me because I am young? I know I am good, but sometimes… Sometimes I think it is about my years.” 

Hermione nods, reaching out to squeeze Viktor’s hand. When neither of them say anything for a minute, she offers, “I don’t think that means you aren’t very, _very_ good at quidditch. I’ve seen you play.” She scoots over to sit next to him and bumps his shoulder with hers. “I may be good at hiding it, but I do know you’re an international quidditch star.” 

They laugh.

“I know this.” Viktor shrugs, rubs his silver-nailed thumb over the back of Hermione’s hand. “Is that terrible to say? That I know I’m good at quidditch?” He cracks a tenuous smile.

“Not at all.” 

Viktor sighs. “I just… I do not know vat… I do not know how to...to see my future. Vat do I do next? I do not know. I love playing, but I know I cannot do it forever. But vat else could I do? I do not vant to be one of those players who used to play but now...now, sort of, they’re just famous for being famous?”

“We call them washed-up.”

“Vashed-up.” Viktor smiles around the feel of the word. “I like that. Like they haff been in the laundry vasher for too long.” 

Hermione laughs. “Exactly.” She tucks her thumb over Viktor’s, stroking the back of his hand. There’s a long, silvery scar along the side of his hand, nearly invisible against his pale skin, from the first and last time he’d ever tried to whittle.

“Well, I know you’ll figure something out. You’re smart and curious, and you obviously figured out how to make quidditch work,” Hermione says earnestly.

Viktor shakes his head, rolling his eyes at himself. “Oh, no, I did not do any of that. I just signed some papers. But thank you, _temenuzhka.”_ He smiles at her a little sadly, then shakes his head. “Okay. Back to work, as you English say.”

“Back to work,” Hermione agrees. She reaches out and ruffles Viktor’s hair. “I think the nail varnish looks nice on you.” 

Viktor smiles. “Thank you.” He holds his hands up to look at his nails, red from the light of the setting sun. “I think so too.”


End file.
